Friends of AOTF: Valve: Feeding us from Under the Table

This is a re-post that we were offered from another blog. Thanks, Cameron @ ReflectionGamer

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a Half-Life fanboy. I played the original Half-Life and it fast because my favorite game of all time. When Half-Life 2 came out, it blew me away in the story, the graphics and especially the character models. I still, to this day, have not played a game more or as often as Half-Life 2 and it stands as my favorite game of all time.

Then Valve started to release the Episodes in the coming years, and I enjoyed them just as much as the original Half-Life 2 game. But then it seemed that Valve got a little distracted; they created the fun, but certainly NOTEpisode 3, Left4Dead. And the following year, out came Left4Dead 2.

Meanwhile, Valve worked and worked on their Steam platform, making it one of the largest online distributer of games on the planet.

So let’s get this strait: Valve created one of the most immersible games of all time with Half-Life 2. They ended it on a cliff hanger. The next game Valve made was the follow up to the cliff hanger ending, Episode 1. A bit more than a year later, Episode 2 landed, ending in a larger cliff hanger than the original game. And now what is Valve doing?

Everything but creating Episode 3.

Yes, Valve is doing good things with Left4Dead. No-one can argue about the quality of Valves games; they’ve never made one bad game in their entire existence. But while they were making Left4Dead and making Steam such a popular problem, they forgot one thing: Half-Life.

Now, of course, we have no idea what’s going on inside Valve’s front doors. Gabe Newel could very well be working his arse off to get Episode 3 out the door, trying to create the perfect game. But to us on the outside, with no information save for one simple concept art, which may or may not be Episode 3, we are starting to feel betrayed. To me, it seems he’s focusing all his time on their new franchise and putting Episode 3 on the back burner, which is not somewhere Episode 3 needs to be.

Maybe Valve has a master plan. Maybe they wanted this sort of argument argued. Maybe they wanted us to squirm a little in waiting for Episode 3. Maybe they are planning on showing Episode 3 at E3.

But Valve, please, we just need something, anything, about the bloody game with only one concept art.